Development and Green Cover – Case of Ahmedabad City

The urban population of Ahmedabad city has increased by almost 33% in last decade; this has led to significant amount of stress on present infrastructure of the city like congested roads, open garbage dumping, water logging, open drainage, encroachments, haphazard parking. These problems have risen due to rapid physical growth of city. One of the biggest losses to the city is the reduction in green cover owing to the haphazard development.

To accommodate large population, high rise buildings are getting constructed, which are occupying the open lands in the city and nearby villages. As the city is expanding horizontally more and more open land having trees is being cleared for construction. And with the growing economy, there is rapid growth of commercial and business centres. With increase in demand, several new shopping malls, multiplexes, show rooms etc have come up in the city in recent times. Most of them have replaced the smaller buildings and green open spaces with tree plantations. Increase in housing demand and real estate prices; have not left any option for builders other than clearing green open spaces for new construction. The existing trees are chopped off for construction and no new trees are grown. Even the trees on pavements are being cleared to facilitate movement of materials during construction and the remaining ones are cleared off as they hinder a clearer view of the shopping mall/business centre or just because it does not match with the stylish design of the building.

With increase in commercial activities and influx of advertisement, hoardings are appearing randomly along the major roads such C.G. Road, Law Garden, Ashram Road, S.G. Highway etc. It is generally observed that the hoardings are erected in private premises. But to increase the visibility of these hoardings, the trees in public places like pavements are being cut. State Government and Corporation are giving green signals for cutting trees for all these purposes without any consideration and involvement of think tank and communities.

With increase in traffic, the roads are getting congested, which need to be widened for smooth movement of traffic, for which again arbitrary chopping of trees is going on in the city, thus reducing the natural shade provided by the trees along the roads. The exposed tar roads reflect most of the heat back to the atmosphere. This is contributing to hotter summers in Ahmedabad than those in Gandhinagar; the capital city located less than 30 km away from it. Gandhinagar has one of the highest tree densities in India, while Ahmedabad having the same topography is nowhere near Gandhinagar to chase the density of trees!

Way out for protection of green cover and trees?

• Making the authorities more proactive. Such as in the case of China and South Korea where the local authorities in cities like Shanghai and Seoul landscape the city with elaborate planning and spending high amount for green cover of the cities.

• Strong enactment of Tree Cutting Act to preserve the already meager green cover of the city.

• People should be made aware of the importance of trees - so they should plant more trees and react to tree cutting.

• Environment friendly architectural designs such as in the case of Nehru Foundation for Development (NFD), where no tree had been cut for construction of its campus.

• Promotion of Green Building ratings (known as Certified Green Buildings) concept for more energy efficient buildings. Designing and operating buildings from an energy efficient perspective can significantly reduce the waste in energy, water usage, reduction in cutting of trees for energy and materials.

• Providing people with resources for increasing and protecting green cover such as organizing tree plantation drives, campaigns and free saplings as GREEN (Group for Research in Ecology and Environment, an initiative taken up by CEPT University, Ahmedabad) is doing.

• Innovative ideas such as Green Hotline with collaboration of NGOs and local authorities can be established where by an individual can call the hotline to report any tree cutting incident.

With proactive approaches like this, we can not only save the city from being hotter and unlivable but it will be step forward to make Ahmedabad as a green city for future generations.

Author: Mr. Vikram Sethi and Mr. Ashit Chandaria
Article published in GREEN Newsletter, CEPT